Awards

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

A Village Life, Louise Glücks eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:

All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.

Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees—

The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;

on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.

—from tributaries”

Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountains opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed.

Glück has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry,” as Langdon Hammer has written of her long lines — expansive, fluent, and full — manifesting a calm omniscience. While Glück's manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.

Review:

Louise Glück is one of Americas most famous poets, and one of the best.... The fictions here are really a pretext for Glück to stage poems that explore, for the first time, material that is neither explicitly her own biography nor that of her mythical stand-ins. Always at the mercy of the Greek gods that inspired her earlier poems, Glück now is playing God herself.” Cleveland Plain Dealer

Review:

Though it resembles her others least, A Village Life may come to be seen as Glück's most beautiful and moving book so far... [It] shows a ripening of Glück's genius, her mastery for depicting the things of this earth...[and] can be seen as the work of a master poet who has done what many poets long to do: she has written about death immortally.” Rain Taxi

Review:

A Village Life magnificently extends the landscapes, the harmonics, and the dramatis personae of Averno ... More than any of Glück's previous volumes, A Village Life has a generous heart, a large spiritual scope in which to imagine the lives of others.” The New Republic

Review:

Not many poets can be electrifying while keeping the stakes this hypothermically low. Glück is a master, finely calibrating the shocks and their intervals. This collection, her 11th, is frightening the way a living statue would be frightening if it were to smile at you.” Los Angeles Times

Review:

Here is a poet at the unmistakable peak of her expressive power and experience... The characters in A Village Life do what the voice tells them. It says forget, you forget. / It says begin again, you begin again.' Louise Glück begins again, unforgettably, in this profound new collection of poems.” Huffington Post

Review:

This 11th book of verse by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück offers beautiful language with a sense of loss and disappointment....The poems in A Village Life combine the intensity of her early work and the longer lines and insight of more recent books. The writing is often hauntingly beautiful....There are stanzas where Glück makes her landscape seem so radiant or exquisite that you don't want to turn the page.” Christian Science Monitor

Review:

Like Cavafy's persona pieces, the real subject of these poems is often a particular mood, not the transmission of details that distinguish, say, a child's voice from a farmers.... Glück lets us hear the silence that follows in the confessional. In my favorite poems in A Village Life, she also shows us what one who has heard that silence can now say.” Kenyon Review

Synopsis:

Grace Schulman, already known as "an elegiac, highly original religious lyricist" (Harold Bloom), elegantly weaves between generations and continents in her new collection.

Synopsis:

“Without a Claim is a modern Book of Psalms. Indeed, the glory in these radiant sacred songs meld an art of high music with a nuanced love of the world unlike any weve heard before. No matter your mood upon entering this world youll soon be grateful, and enchanted. In any such house of praise, God herself must be grateful.” &#8212; Philip Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Failure and The God of Loneliness

Grace Schulman, who has been called “a vital and permanent poet” (Harold Bloom), makes new the life she finds in other cultures and in the distant past. In Without a Claim, she masterfully encompasses music, faith, art, and history. The title poem alludes to the Montauk sachem who sold land without any concept of rights to property, and meditates on our own notion of ownership: “No more than geese in flight, shadowing the lawn, / cries piercing wind, do we possess these fields, / given the title, never the dominion.” She traces the illusion of rights, from land to objects, from our loves to our very selves. Alternatively, she finds permanence in art, whether in galleries or on cave walls, and in music, whether in the concert hall, on the streets of New York, or in the waves at sea.

Synopsis:

A Village Life, Louise Gl&uuml;cks eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:

All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.

Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees&#8212;

The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;

on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.

&#8212;from “tributaries”

Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountains opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed.

Gl&uuml;ck has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as “the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry,” as Langdon Hammer has written of her long lines&#8212;expansive, fluent, and full&#8212;manifesting a calm omniscience. While Gl&uuml;cks manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.

About the Author

Louise Glück is the author of eleven books of poems and a collection of essays. Her many awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches at Yale University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Review"
by Cleveland Plain Dealer,
Louise Glück is one of Americas most famous poets, and one of the best.... The fictions here are really a pretext for Glück to stage poems that explore, for the first time, material that is neither explicitly her own biography nor that of her mythical stand-ins. Always at the mercy of the Greek gods that inspired her earlier poems, Glück now is playing God herself.”

"Review"
by Rain Taxi,
Though it resembles her others least, A Village Life may come to be seen as Glück's most beautiful and moving book so far... [It] shows a ripening of Glück's genius, her mastery for depicting the things of this earth...[and] can be seen as the work of a master poet who has done what many poets long to do: she has written about death immortally.”

"Review"
by The New Republic,
A Village Life magnificently extends the landscapes, the harmonics, and the dramatis personae of Averno ... More than any of Glück's previous volumes, A Village Life has a generous heart, a large spiritual scope in which to imagine the lives of others.”

"Review"
by Los Angeles Times,
Not many poets can be electrifying while keeping the stakes this hypothermically low. Glück is a master, finely calibrating the shocks and their intervals. This collection, her 11th, is frightening the way a living statue would be frightening if it were to smile at you.”

"Review"
by Huffington Post,
Here is a poet at the unmistakable peak of her expressive power and experience... The characters in A Village Life do what the voice tells them. It says forget, you forget. / It says begin again, you begin again.' Louise Glück begins again, unforgettably, in this profound new collection of poems.”

"Review"
by Christian Science Monitor,
This 11th book of verse by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück offers beautiful language with a sense of loss and disappointment....The poems in A Village Life combine the intensity of her early work and the longer lines and insight of more recent books. The writing is often hauntingly beautiful....There are stanzas where Glück makes her landscape seem so radiant or exquisite that you don't want to turn the page.”

"Review"
by Kenyon Review,
Like Cavafy's persona pieces, the real subject of these poems is often a particular mood, not the transmission of details that distinguish, say, a child's voice from a farmers.... Glück lets us hear the silence that follows in the confessional. In my favorite poems in A Village Life, she also shows us what one who has heard that silence can now say.”

"Synopsis"
by Firebrand,
Grace Schulman, already known as "an elegiac, highly original religious lyricist" (Harold Bloom), elegantly weaves between generations and continents in her new collection.

"Synopsis"
by Firebrand,

“Without a Claim is a modern Book of Psalms. Indeed, the glory in these radiant sacred songs meld an art of high music with a nuanced love of the world unlike any weve heard before. No matter your mood upon entering this world youll soon be grateful, and enchanted. In any such house of praise, God herself must be grateful.” &#8212; Philip Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Failure and The God of Loneliness

Grace Schulman, who has been called “a vital and permanent poet” (Harold Bloom), makes new the life she finds in other cultures and in the distant past. In Without a Claim, she masterfully encompasses music, faith, art, and history. The title poem alludes to the Montauk sachem who sold land without any concept of rights to property, and meditates on our own notion of ownership: “No more than geese in flight, shadowing the lawn, / cries piercing wind, do we possess these fields, / given the title, never the dominion.” She traces the illusion of rights, from land to objects, from our loves to our very selves. Alternatively, she finds permanence in art, whether in galleries or on cave walls, and in music, whether in the concert hall, on the streets of New York, or in the waves at sea.

"Synopsis"
by Netread,

A Village Life, Louise Gl&uuml;cks eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:

All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.

Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees&#8212;

The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;

on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.

&#8212;from “tributaries”

Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountains opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed.

Gl&uuml;ck has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as “the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry,” as Langdon Hammer has written of her long lines&#8212;expansive, fluent, and full&#8212;manifesting a calm omniscience. While Gl&uuml;cks manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.

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